ABBO

Project lead
Prof. Dr. Thomas Freiling
Prof. Dr. Matthias Kohl

Project staff
Dr. Bastian Steinmüller
Christoph Krause
Sally Sadetzki

Third-party funding providers
Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space as part of the funding programme InnoVET "Shaping the future – Innovations for excellent professional training"

Project duration
December 2020 – November 2024

Coordinating institution
Lars und Christian Engel Stiftung (LUCE Trust)

Project partners

• BHS Corrugated Maschinen und Anlagenbau GmbH
• University of Applied Labour Studies (HdBA)
   

ABBO is a pilot project for the development of innovative, modern, excellent training and further education concepts based on regional, institutional and digital networking. The project addresses the topics in 4 different modules. A concept for "early training" is being developed in the field of career guidance, which combines career guidance and job training, accompanying and supporting young people while they are still at school (enhancing career choice skills). In the second part, training and further education modules for the metal and electrical professions will be designed and tested, focusing on "Industry 4.0 and beyond". These can open up opportunities, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), even if the necessary resources (e.g. digital equipment) or structures do not exist. These two topics go together with the components of training for (vocational) education staff and regional networking for digital learning location cooperation. Industry 4.0 and digitalisation as concerns for the future do not only require new skills in future workers but at the same time make it essential to provide teaching staff with sufficient training and qualifications. This is achieved through professionalisation as well as a focus on methodology, didactics and media education. Equally central to the topic of Industry 4.0 and to integrated career guidance (early training), regional networking structures in conjunction with digital learning location cooperations connect those interested in education, schools, institutions and companies in a regional network of the vocational training landscape. The planned virtual ABBO world offers a communicative and organisational space that invites parallel digital networked learning.

The team at the University of Applied Labour Studies (HdBA) is responsible for the academic support in the joint research project. Some of their tasks include the continual monitoring and documentation of development, test and reflection processes with the aim of generating and transferring transferable and generic findings for the further development of vocational education and training. In order to achieve this goal, needs assessments are carried out for the individual project components, and the entire design process for the individual products is monitored academically. Furthermore, transfer and sustainability tasks (including conferences and publications) are also significant parts of the range of tasks to enable close integration between the practical testing context and academic research on the topic.